Out rebounded 40-22; they hit 21 FT's, we 12. Fouled way too much = poor D.

Pretty sound defeat.

Only good news: 5 of our 6 games have been away. Six of our next 8 will also be away. I think that will toughen, not break, us. And Jackson is still not full speed, but will be, hopefully, when it really counts.

Some ideas from this game: The way it was called we were taken totally out of our offense. Our bigs got in ticky-tack foul trouble and it was ugly. Very rarely do you see a game that was so unbalanced in the foul calls. If we can't force an opponent to guard our big guys they will collapse on the perimeter and not let us shoot. We have a number of capable scorers in the paint. Gordon will lead them, but Cam, CJ, Pegram and others can score in the paint and will HAVE to if this team is to jell. We have to find someone who can penetrate and dish. There are some personalities on our team, and we have to have them come out in order to improve. Our offense has not adjusted to the new shot clock very well. We are late into our sets and therefore force too many shots. Defensively we are really not that good-yet. Mike Young coached teams will play defense well before the end of the season. And finally, this team is probably a little over scheduled. We play a lot of good teams in the pre-season and haven't had much luck in catching them at a good point in their schedule. For example, playing Ga Tech after they lost to ETSU is not setting them up for a sneaky defeat! We do get some home games before the SoCon season, and that will help-especially getting the freshmen going. I'll say it again-we may have more talent than ever on this team.

One guy who has, quietly, played with a lot of heart so far is C.J. Neumann, especially on the boards. Hopefully he will influence others to do some of the same. Gordon continues to do some amazing things too.

On the recruiting front, it would be great if (as Boulder has suggested) we could add a guard who can penetrate and create shots for others. Or we may already have that in one of the big guards we have signed in the strong incoming class.

I was at the game and couldn't agree more with Boulder. Once we started getting fouls on our bigs they had to keep coming in and out and our flow suffered as a result. Couple that with Tech getting red hot for about a 10-12 minute stretch and we were cooked. The good news...we have FOUR pretty solid bigs. Even Sawvell played pretty well I thought. But we can't create off the dribble or we won't, not sure which. When we started to do it towards the end of the game, we actually drew some fouls. Allen and Brooks need to be more assertive on offense and Garcia does as well. We had several looks that would have been contested that we should have taken..Garcia in particular needs to shoot more. That said...I think we are going to be good. Remember...now is not the time to be playing your best basketball and we certainly are not. Let's hope we start peaking in January and February.

Personally I think Brooks is tied down by the coaches. He is not the Garcia type guard, under control and within the system. He needs to run and jump and be creative, and I am just not sure that works with us. I also think Cam can really be a scoring machine as well, but he too has some of that creativity inside. We need to play the inside outside game and get it into the big guys who can score or pitch it out for threes. We are playing a lot of guys here in the early season, and it can only help down the road. One thing we know; they WILL learn to play better defense as the year goes on!

I only watched the second half, which was not too fun, but Coach Young said the first half was probably the best half of basketball they have played all year. Also had one good half at Columbia. Time to do it for 40 minutes!

boulder3m wrote:Personally I think Brooks is tied down by the coaches. He is not the Garcia type guard, under control and within the system. He needs to run and jump and be creative, and I am just not sure that works with us. I also think Cam can really be a scoring machine as well, but he too has some of that creativity inside. We need to play the inside outside game and get it into the big guys who can score or pitch it out for threes. We are playing a lot of guys here in the early season, and it can only help down the road. One thing we know; they WILL learn to play better defense as the year goes on!

The new big guards we have coming in might well free Brooks, and Garcia and Allen, up to be a little more creative and free wheeling.

Dahlman, Johnson, and Martin were pretty special.Love Pegeam's potential and McGee and Stumpe are scorers but they both need to play better D.In fact the entire team needs to play better D. KyChristian's scrawny PG lit us up tonight.i bet he led all scorers with at least 22.We need to get better. Gave up 66 points to an independent NAIA team that looked like they couldn't compete in the Northern Greenville County Baptist Church League.